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NEWBURYPORT, MASS., _Dec. 28, 1889_.
DEAR SIR: Your solid volume reached me several days ago, and some time
after, your letter of Dec. 20. I have now read the work pretty
carefully, and shall no doubt often return to it. Considering the
restraints you were under, as nephew and as Republican, you have
executed your task well and given to the world the most pathetic of
the tragedies resulting from the system of spoils. Never again, until
that blighting curse of free institutions is destroyed, will a man of
Roscoe Conkling's genius, pride and purity remain long in the public
service, if ever he enters it. He was the last of the Romans. My great
regret is that he did not consecrate his whole existence to the reform
of the civil service. I have such an acute sense of the shame, the
cruelty and the childish folly of the present system that I sometimes
feel as if we ought to stop all our other work and enter upon a
universal crusade against it.
You must not expect the public to remain satisfied with the omissions
and suppressions of your book. Sooner or later, somebody will supply
them, and you might just as well have told the whole story.